Got’cher Back

Posted on January 31, 2013 by tosabarbell

I have known a few people in life who have had catastrophic back injuries. Construction workers mostly. Men who lived for over 40 years in constant pain. In sleep and awake, they were never away from it. It terrified me as a youngster. Life’s lesson? Take care of your back.

Last week I tweaked my back enough to make me nervous. After the initial strain, I was able to gingerly walk to the gym locker room where I laid down on the floor and stretched for about a half hour. I was able to make it out by then, come home to ice and sit up in my favorite chair. But I was freaked. I’ve been making excellent progress the last two months and as much as I didn’t want to see that derailed, I really didn’t want to have a bad back for an extended period of time.

I rested Friday and started Saturday with some empty bar RDL’s and light deadlifts. Same goes for Sunday. By Monday I was feeling up enough to stick to my program; however; I radically decreased the weights and up’d the volume. Think 95# bench can’t cause soreness? Do enough and they will. That was after what seemed like 4000 light presses.

But I felt good and I was training.  I’ve also learned my lesson. The current program has me training M-TH with Friday off and the olympic lifts on Saturday. I’ve been going hard enough to be sufficiently exhausted and fatigued by Thursday’s and I’m done with that. I’m not recovering enough to stay healthy and most importantly, my back has gone from the “good tired” to the “bad sore” and leaving me open for injury.

I’m thankful to be smart enough to adjust and I’m incredibly thankful for a good back and the continued ability to train.

Take care of your backs and for those of you who have no idea how to coach the deadlift and allow novices to yank a bar off the floor without keeping the back locked in extension? You suck. Truth.

When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.

Abraham Lincoln

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Outside the Window

Posted on January 30, 2013 by tosabarbell

My friend and fellow strength coach, Good Ryan, is spending time in Kabul, Afghanistan these days for work. He was there last fall, home for a bit, and back again. He posted some pictures yesterday that gave me pause and he was kind enough to let me use them here.

Yesterday was another Monday off school for the Oz man and we had the very serious duty of deciding whether to A) watch Braveheart on AMC for the 4,392nd time; B) have him try to teach me more of the Hobbit Lego xBox 360 game which didn’t go too well the first time; or C) play another “to the death” game of Uno. Pretty intense.

Then I saw this…

It’s so common for our world to be so small, that looking outside the window is more like looking in a mirror. The neighbors have about the same kind of house, about the same kind of car, and about the same kind of schedule. So often, our reality represents to us how the rest of the world is unless you are one of the lucky people who get to travel outside of your comfort zone here and there.

While I will not minimize the pressures and problems our children face, looking far outside the window, we can see the pressures and problems children in other societies face are quite different. I’m very thankful that my children have homes (or hotel rooms for my traveling construction worker); more than one days supply of clothes; and as much food as they can take in without too much trouble in getting it. And I can remember that not all kids are so lucky, here and abroad.

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Mahatma Gandhi

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The Bear

Posted on January 29, 2013 by tosabarbell

One of my favorite competition pictures of Bigg is from Lapland two years ago deadlifting the Iceman Bear.  I found a story from a couple of years back on IronMind that when Champions League promoter Ilkka Kinnunen announced to the athletes that they would be lifting the National animal, some of the guys were a bit concerned about whether or not the bear was in a cage and just how close they would be to it’s mouth.

Bigg said that Dutch Pro Jarno Hams had a lot of fun with that one, trying to scare the guys as much as possible until they figured out it was stuffed. There was a cute quote from Misha Koklyaev that “when the bear shouts, it will give me extra energy to lift.” I asked Bigg about that. He said that Misha got pretty sick at this competition and that by the time the rules meeting was over, Misha was already downing Vodka to feel better. When he invited Bigg to come drink with him, of course he did. Who’s going to say no to drinking Vodka at eight in the morning on the Arctic Circle with Misha Koklyaev? Not my guy, for sure!

OH! Bigg also said that after the bear deadlift, we get to eat Reindeer stew and potatoes. Awesome.

Have a great day.

“If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.”

Paul Newman

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Monday Bacon: Walk it Off

Posted on January 28, 2013 by tosabarbell

I’ve been in sports since I was a tot. As much as I’d love to tell stories of hard nosed softball, soccer, or swimming coaches, the one coach/instructor that still brings chills of fear to my heart is my dance teacher in elementary school. Her name was Linda. She had very dark  hair, olive skin, and her smokers voice was loud and raspy. She was a tyrant. The fat lady on Dance Mom’s is a pussy cat compared to Linda.

She ruled with an iron fist. It didn’t matter if we were too young to to understand why we would get yelled at, we just knew that at all costs we wanted to avoid her rath. One of her biggest lessons of all? When you’re too tired to think straight…you walk it off. If anyone DARED sit down or (gasp) lay down in a heap on her floor? You’d be done. As in, Get the F! out of my dance studio and never return!

I think of her each time I see a new picture on the interwebz of an “elite” exerciser gasping for air in a puddle of their own sweat after a workout. In my opinion, their coaches are doing them a disservice. Yup. I do not argue the intensity or extremity of a WOD. I’ve done them, they’re hard. I get the same feeling of utter exhaustion after a Dan John complex. They’re quite horrible too. But I stay on my feet and walk it off. I am an adult, I am not injured, I am quite capable of not bringing drama to my workout sessions. I would much rather prefer that people who are new to this style of working out would learn to “walk it off” instead of appearing as an attention whore who must let everyone and their junkyard neighbor know that they just worked out.

You would do far better coaching your clients through a workout and encouraging them to stay on their feet or at least just sit and cool down. Please?

If we die, we want people to accept it…The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.

Gus Grissom

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